"Some Circumstantial Evidence Is Very Strong, As When You Find A Trout In The Milk" – H.D. Thoreau

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Scenes From A Brain Hiccup

This happened about a month or two ago, I just remembered it today and started laughing my head off. Don’t know why, it’s such a sad story…

…

STUART: So I went up to Oakridge Mall yesterday…

ME: (taking pull on beer) Oh yeah? Was it crazy up there?

STUART: A little. Not too bad. Oh, except they just opened an Apple store up there now, so of course that was pretty intense.

ME: …

ME: …Are you kidding me?

STUART: No, no. Big grand opening. Very bizarre.

ME: Did you go inside?

STUART: Nah, the lineup was way too long…

ME: Jesus, I BET it was! Whoa. Now that takes me totally by surprise, TOTALLY…

STUART: …Ah.

ME: …How did I not hear about this? My mind is BLOWN.

STUART: Yeah…

ME: I mean I just never even thought of something like that, it never even came close to crossing my mind as a possibility…!

STUART: Yeah…they sell, like, iPods and stuff.

ME: They…uh, they do? That’s weird…

STUART: Carrying cases for your iPod, they sell laptops…

ME: …

ME: …Laptops?

STUART: …Because it’s not an APPLE CORP BOUTIQUE, you insane freak! Apple, you know, like Apple Computers, like things that actually exist? Holy shit, how many beers have you had?

ME: Uh…

STUART: Yeah, Paul called Yoko and said “What the fuck, eh? We’re both billionaires, why not give it a go? Ringo’s still storing a bunch of old conceptual art in his basement, we can open the first one in VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA in the MIDDLE OF WINTER, you can fly over there and get in a BAG as part of the window display…” And she said “Great idea, let’s do it!” Oh my God, have you lost your mind?

ME: I…

ME: Oh…

ME: …Damn.

…

Told you it was a sad story. I just figured, we got new Beatles songs a few years ago, Beatles @ the BBC, those Mono remasters just came out, it’s like a cornucopia of Beatles stuff, I guess I just figured…well, I don’t know how this can be topped, but I bet somebody’s got an idea of how to do it…

The burden is that WoW is now an economy larger than the GDP of Samoa; as impressively, its world subscribership is 11.5 million, fairly comparable with (1) Cuba, (2) Manhattan.

My god. The premise would be that after the US at large, and China and the EU have hit the Weimar Threshold together, all currencies terminally debased at once, and have descended into anarchy and dragged the rest of us down with them, the only three economies left standing with any credible credit or room for manoeuvre, are Cuba, Wall Street and WoW. With 0.5% of the world population between them, the global economy hangs on their feudal whims. Think of it as The Mouse That Roared plotted by Charles Stross.

It was only for a moment, but a moment filled with angels of the revolution, steely-eyed quants, Conneticut Yankees, gold point cyber-barons with their sweatshop toilers, the Lich King and the Algorithm, and every one of them knows Their Hour Has Come.

We’re oddly in sync on the classics. I picked up a copy of The Shockwave Rider yesterday. I know it well, and it’s held up better than most.

The Web is SF material; so is open source and so is Wikipaedia. And we’re selling real history and real principles short if we don’t remember to say, that there was once a serious struggle between forces of information ownership and forces of free expression, and the latter forces won. People like Linus Tolvalds and Eric Raymond have lived out SF dreams very close to Nicky Halfinger’s future-shock legend.

In my book, the important thing at present is that the open-source community should be making itself hospitable to a new generation of enthusiasts who don’t know the traditions of open-source in detail. To some degree it’s happening, but we don’t have the same maniacs proclaiming the revolutionary joy of it all, and I wonder if we’re beginning to fail to recruit.

Also, whatever the incestualities of Wikipaedia, its ideological heart is Free Speech. If it were anything more contentious than that, it would crumble. Instead it seems to be in equilibrium. But you can’t raise fervour by applauding free speech, that’s like applauding a balanced diet and getting a good night’s sleep. And it just so happens that the premier fervid libertarian fantasy is Ayn Rand. John Brunner is too mild, although he knocked off some salutary cautionary tales. I wouldn’t read too much into reading Rand specifically, it’s the Challenge of the Geek in whatever form that gets kids pushing their envelope of competence.

That said – and here’s a scary thought – the ‘new’ Beatles songs were *fifteen years ago* now, and Live at the BBC sixteen. There are people who will be voting in the UK elections this year who were *two* when Live At The BBC came out. Who – if they think of the Beatles at all – have no memory of a time before Free As A Bird. For whom the Anthologies have ‘always’ been out…